Australia has ordered all non-essential officials to leave Israel and the United Arab Emirates two weeks after the US and Israel\u2019s war on Iran engulfed the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said staff were directed to leave \u201cdue to the deteriorating security situation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssential Australian officials will remain in-country to support Australians who need it,\u201d she said in a statement posted on social media on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.<\/p>\n
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n
By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe continue to advise Australians not to travel to Israel and the UAE.<\/p>\n \u201cWe urge you to leave the Middle East if you can and if it\u2019s safe to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n Senator Wong\u2019s statement comes after the government told families of Australian officials in Israel and Lebanon to leave in the days before the war began on February 28.<\/p>\n Voluntary departures were also offered to diplomats\u2019 dependents in the UAE, Jordan and Qatar.<\/p>\n The war has so far killed about 2000 people and caused the biggest disruption to global oil supplies in decades.<\/p>\n Oil prices that had come down earlier this week after US President Donald Trump said the war would soon be over soared back above $US100 a barrel after an apparent escalation in Iranian attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n The two-week-old conflict has prompted thousands of Australians to flee the region, with the government saying on Tuesday that more than 2600 Australians were returning home on commercial flights.<\/p>\n Senator Wong said the overwhelming majority of Australian citizens who were travelling through the Middle East and became stuck when the war broke out had returned home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia has ordered all non-essential officials to leave Israel and the United Arab Emirates two weeks after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,1720],"class_list":["post-536404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}